Atlanta Sight-seeing

My dad was here for the last 10 days. Now we have a car and a free Saturday, we decided we should take the opportunity to see the sights. There are tons of things to do in Atlanta, with Keiko having an interest in only a few of them. So we started out with those. The World of Coca-Cola and Georgia Aquarium are both new and were built next to each other. So they have combo tickets to save money. These were Keiko's picks.

As long as we were there, I wanted to see a few things nearby, namely Atlanta Underground and Centennial Park.

We started out parking at the cheapest place, which was Atlanta Underground. It is basically a mall that is where older Atlanta used to be before they built on top of it. Not a terribly special mall besides it's location. There are bunch of places to learn about Atlanta history, but no Japanese translations so we skipped out on that.

We passed by CNN center. This is also a popular tourist attraction as they have tours you can go one and see the sets etc. We didn't make it to this one today.

We did make it to Centennial Park. This park was built in preparation for the 1996 Summer Olympmics in Atlanta and infamous for the bomb. It turned a rundown part of Atlanta into a big tourist attraction. It now has free music and festivals.

We did realize this was going to be a big crowded weekend. What we didn't know that on this Saturday there were several events, all attracting tens of thousands of people each.

-The Alabama Virginia Tech football game. All I could see were jerseys from these schools. The South is nuts about football.

-Atlanta Braves game, with the stadium nearby

-Georgia tech football game

-NASCAR on Sunday

-Everybody else that comes for the 3-day weekend

This is a Virginia Tech fan that has really gone all out.

The Centennial Park was where ESPN had made base for their college football show. It was filled with people rooting for their schools. It was fun to show Keiko a little American culture about tailgates and football fever.

This is the Olympic fountain.

The G-fish stands for the Georgia aquarium. From the website, "On November 23, 2005, Georgia Aquarium officially opened its doors to the public. As the world’s largest aquarium, Georgia Aquarium features more animals than any other aquarium in more than eight million gallons of water."

Apparently, this was due to contribution by Home Depot.

I have nothing but good things to say about this aquarium. It was a little pricey, but it truly was the most impressive aquarium I have ever seen. It had several tanks with just huge giant glass windows to the tank, like bigger than movie theater screens. It had a great variety of wildlife, tons of things for kids to do including just a play area when kids just need to run around, etc.

This is the map. It is very easy to navigate because you can see every section of the aquarium from the center lobby. My favorite was the one in the top right of the map because it had a giant glass tunnel through the water.

Pictures of Keikos favorites incloude these little guys that just come out of the dirt to feed.

Dad and I in the tunnel

Sawfish above the tunnel

The center plant is actually a fish

Touching a sting ray (and a shark)

We then went on to the World of Coca-Cola. It is a combination of a museum and great marketing/advertising.

Here is the giant building.

Keiko found a Japanese coke machine

An example of all the artifacts they have

Our souvenirs. They have a automated factory at slow speed so you see the bottles being put on a conveyer belt, being cleaned and photopraphed for quality, where the syrup is combined with carbonated water, the filtering, and then you see the filling of the bottles and it being capped and get to take one home with you.

Highlights of that for me were this 3-d Star Tours kind of ride where the seats move and you get sprayed with water and mist and poked by "bugs" in an effort to discover the recipe of Coke.

They they have a room with soda fountain dispensers of Coke products all over the world. Really all over the world. Some taste pretty good, some taste pretty awful. We did this after not eating lunch and after having 64 flavors of Coke and Coke products at 3pm with no lunch was not the best idea.

So we went to a 50's style diner and filled up. Keiko seems to like American food more than me. I got some Greek lasagna and Keiko got lamb and potatoes. Since being pregnant, she seems to like meat more.

THANKS DAD for the great day!